The Cambridge History of Christianity
ORIGINS TO CONSTANTINE

The first of the nine-volume Cambridge History of Christianity series, Origins to Constantine provides a comprehensive overview of the essential events, persons, places and issues involved in the emergence of the Christian religion in the Mediterranean world in the first three centuries. Over thirty essays written by scholarly experts trace this dynamic history from the time of Jesus through to the rise of imperial Christianity in the fourth century. The volume provides thoughtful and well-documented analyses of the diverse forms of Christian community, identity and practice that arose within decades of Jesus’ death, and which through missionary efforts were soon implanted throughout the Roman empire. Origins to Constantine examines the distinctive characteristics of Christian groups in each geographical region up to the end of the third century, while also exploring the development of the institutional forms, intellectual practices and theological formulations that would mark Christian history in subsequent centuries.

MARGARET M. MITCHELL is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Paul and the rhetoric of reconciliation: an exegetical investigation of the language and composition of 1 Corinthians and The heavenly trumpet: John Chrysostom and the art of Pauline interpretation, and is co-executive editor of Novum Testamentum Supplements monograph series.

FRANCES M. YOUNG is a Fellow of the British Academy and received an OBE for services to Theology in 1998. She became Professor and Head of the Department of Theology, University of Birmingham, in 1986, Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1995, served as Pro-Vice Chancellor from 1997–2002 and is now Emerita Professor of Theology. Her many publications include From Nicaea to Chalcedon and Biblical exegesis and the formation of Christian culture, as well as more popular works such as The making of the creeds, Can these dry bones live? and Face to face.

The Cambridge History of
CHRISTIANITY

The Cambridge History of Christianity offers a comprehensive chronological account of the development of Christianity in all its aspects – theological, intellectual, social, political, regional, global – from its beginnings to the present day. Each volume makes a substantial contribution in its own right to the scholarship of its period and the complete History constitutes a major work of academic reference. Far from being merely a history of western European Christianity and its offshoots, the History aims to provide a global perspective. Eastern and Coptic Christianity are given full consideration from the early period onwards, and later, African, Far Eastern, New World, South Asian and other non-European developments in Christianity receive proper coverage. The volumes cover popular piety and non-formal expressions of Christian faith and treat the sociology of Christian formation, worship and devotion in a broad cultural context. The question of relations between Christianity and other major faiths is also kept in sight throughout. The History will provide an invaluable resource for scholars and stu- dents alike.

List of volumes:

Origins to Constantine
EDITED BY MARGARET M. MITCHELL AND FRANCES M. YOUNG

Constantine to c. 600
EDITED BY WINRICH LöHR, FRED NORRIS AND AUGUSTINE CASIDAY

Early Medieval Christianity c. 600–c. 1100
EDITED BY THOMAS NOBLE AND JULIA SMITH

Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100–c. 1500
EDITED BY MIRI RUBIN AND WALTER SIMON

Eastern Christianity
EDITED BY MICHAEL ANGOLD

Reform and Expansion 1500– 1660
EDITED BY RONNIE PO-CHIA HSIA

Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution 1 660–1 81 5
EDITED BY STEWART J. BROWN AND TIMOTHY TACKETT

World Christianities c. 1815–c. 1914
EDITED BY BRIAN STANLEY AND SHERIDAN GILLEY

World Christianities c. 1914–c. 2000
EDITED BY HUGH MCLEOD

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF
CHRISTIANITY

*
VOLUME 1
Origins to Constantine
*

Edited by

MARGARET M. MITCHELL

and

FRANCES M. YOUNG

Assistant editor
K. Scott Bowie

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 2006

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and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
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First published 2006

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Origins to Constantine / edited by Frances M. Young, Margaret M. Mitchell ; assistant editor, K. Scott Bowie.
p. cm. – (The Cambridge history of Christianity; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521-81239-9 (hardback)
1. Church history – Primitive and early church, ca. 30–600. I. Young, Frances M. (Frances Margaret) II. Mitchell, Margaret Mary, 1956-- III. Bowie, Kenneth Scott. IV. Title. V. Series.
BR165.066 2006 270.1 – dc22 2005012926

ISBN-13 978-0-521-81239-9 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-81239-9 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Illustrations

Maps

Contributors

HAROLD W. ATTRIDGE, Yale Divinity School

JOHN BEHR, St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary

DAVID BRAKKE, Indiana University

AVERIL CAMERON, Keble College, Oxford

A. J. DROGE, University of California, San Diego

MARK EDWARDS, Christ Church, Oxford

†W. H. C. FREND, emeritus, University of Glasgow, Bye-Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

SEAN FREYNE, Trinity College, Dublin

HARRY Y. GAMBLE, University of Virginia

STUART GEORGE HALL, emeritus, King’s College London, University of St Andrews, Scotland

SUSAN ASHBROOK HARVEY, Brown University

ROBIN M. JENSEN, Vanderbilt Divinity School

HANS-JOSEF KLAUCK, University of Chicago

JUDITH LIEU, King’s College London

JOEL MARCUS, Duke Divinity School

GERHARD MAY, emeritus, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz

DENIS MINNS, Blackfriars, Oxford

WAYNE A. MEEKS, emeritus, Yale University

MARGARET M. MITCHELL, University of Chicago

CAROLYN OSIEK, Brite Divinity School

BIRGER A. PEARSON, emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara

TESSA RAJAK, University of Reading

ADOLF MARTIN RITTER, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg

MAUREEN A. TILLEY, University of Dayton

CHRISTINE TREVETT, University of Cardiff

FRANK TROMBLEY, University of Cardiff

MARKUS VINZENT, University of Birmingham

FRANCES M. YOUNG, emerita, University of Birmingham

Preface

Once upon a time, historians of the early church wrote a simple story of a pristine faith received from Jesus Christ and communicated to his disciples. With an agreed gospel summed up in the Apostles’ Creed, they dispersed to spread the word in all directions. In time, however, this unified message was frustrated by distortions called heresies, which produced their own offspring, multiplying and diversifying, by contrast with the one truth entrusted to the apostles. Despite heresy and persecution, however, Christianity triumphed with the conversion of Constantine.

   Doubtless that is an over-simplification of an over-simplification, yet it is towards the goal of emancipation from such a schematised view of earliest Christianity (a perspective inherited from the ancient sources themselves) that much modern critical scholarship has been directed. The recognition of diversity within Christianity from the very beginning has transformed study of its origins. Simple models of development, or single theory explanations, whether they be applied to organisational, liturgical, doctrinal or other aspects of early church history, are recognisably inadequate. We have endeavoured to capture the complexity of early Christianity and its socio-cultural setting, whilst also indicating some of the elements that make it possible to trace a certain coherence, a recognisable identity, maintained over time and defended resolutely despite cultural pressure that could have produced something other.

   It is thanks to interdisciplinary scholarship, together with the variety of new evidence provided by archaeological activities and by chance finds such as the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, that this project is possible. Inevitably, the essays assembled here are brief overviews of what have become vast areas of research, but we hope that their virtue is the fact that, both severally and together, they provide balance and perspective, coherence and diversity, as well as the means to explore further the complex topics with which they engage.

   Perhaps the greatest conundrum for the historian of Christian origins is how to deal with the figure of Jesus. Most movements are generated by a founder whose biography would seem to be the natural starting-point. But in the case of Jesus, it is not so simple. In a significant sense, Christian faith is founded upon the person of Jesus Christ himself. The Prelude to the volume, ‘Jesus Christ, foundation of Christianity’, engages the consequent problems: is it possible to write the kind of historical biography of Jesus that we expect in the case of other significant figures, and, even if it were, would it do justice to what he has actually represented for Christian believers?

   In part I, ‘The political, social and religious setting’, we present three essays which sketch the three major formative contexts within which early Christianity developed. The first outlines the local setting of the life of Jesus and his earliest Jewish followers in Galilee and Judea. The second moves onto a wider stage, as it considers the presence of Jews outside that immediate locality, in the ‘diaspora’, and their response to the broader context of Graeco-Roman culture. It was both within and alongside the Greek-speaking Jewish communities outside Palestine that Christianity first spread, and it owed a considerable debt to Jewish precursors in developing an apologetic stance towards ‘pagan’ society. The third sketches the political and social realities of the Roman empire which both facilitated and thwarted the growth of Christian communities, as subsequent chapters demonstrate. The story of the first three centuries of Christianity may be depicted, broadly speaking, as a process whereby a counter-cultural movement is increasingly enculturated, and the task of writing that story may be undertaken through an analysis of the ways in which the movement both fitted within and challenged the various cultural environments in which it found itself.

   The essays in part II, ‘The Jesus movements’, explore the forms of Christianity that can be traced behind the New Testament documents, the final essay considering the nature of early Christian communities as social entities in the world of the late first century. It is clear that Jesus was a Jew, and his immediate followers were likewise Jews. The continuing existence of Jewish Christianity has become a subject of significant historical research, though bedevilled by questions of definition. It is also clear that our earliest Christian documents, namely the Pauline epistles, bear witness to the rapid incorporation of non-Jews into the community of believers in Jesus Christ, as well as to controversy about the terms on which that incorporation should take place. The first two essays therefore seek to trace the lineaments of Jewish and Gentile Christianity respectively. Their ultimate separation obscures the difficulties of differentiation in some New Testament texts, not least the gospel of John, where hostility to ‘the Jews’ may betray disputes within a Jewish community about where true Jewishness is to be found, rather than the more obvious possibility of a community defining itself over against Judaism. Be that as it may, the Johannine literature merits special attention, seeming as it does to represent Christian communities with a distinctive interpretation of the Jesus tradition, despite its ultimate acceptance within the common canon of New Testament writings. Yet these differing Christian groups have a family likeness, and their characteristic community ethos, organisational patterns and ritual forms are considered as a climax to the section.

   The following section, part III, ‘Community traditions and self-definition’, considers various ways in which Christian identity was formed in the next generation or two. The first essay examines the emergence of the written record, and the way in which the Christian movement early on developed a literary culture that was crucial to its sense of self and its propagation. The second is devoted to the complex figure of Marcion, whose legacy for the history of the Christian canon as well as its theological foundations is inestimable. What Marcion and his opponents had in common was the same process of identity formation through differentiation from others. In each such case, both among those who called themselves Christians, and between Christians and ‘others’ (Jews and ‘pagans’), this was a complex interactive process as the significant others were themselves undergoing identity transformations even as they were being configured as the opponent in Christian consciousness or apologetic. Attempts to capture such a process may take several forms: one might paint on a broad canvas, endeavouring to collect the broadest possible base of information and produce a carefully nuanced position; or one might present a more detailed analysis of a particular dialectical interchange. The essay on ‘Self-definition vis-à-vis the Jewish matrix’ appropriately adopts the first approach, given the intense debates about the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity which have characterised scholarship in the late twentieth century. The other tactic is evident in the following essay on ‘Self-definition vis-à-vis the Graeco-Roman world’, which offers insight into the complexity of defining exactly what distinguished the Christian discourse from that of others through a case study of Justin Martyr and Celsus, the opponent of Christianity. When over-arching models have essential similarities, the question of differentiation becomes the more urgent: Jews, philosophers and Christians had subtly different versions of a hierarchically ordered universe with a single divine Being at its apex but argued profoundly over what or who should be worshipped and how.

   A defining discourse was necessitated also by groups (often uncritically lumped together as ‘Gnostic’) experienced by Christians as too close for comfort and, therefore, doubly threatening. Their teachings were eventually rejected by the ‘great church’ because they were perceived to subvert sharply the core legacy from Judaism, characterised as insistence on the one true God who created the universe, declared it good, and through the prophets revealed the divine providential plan to be realised at the climax of history. Both sides of that dialogue are presented and considered in this section. By the end of the second century, a sense of what constituted the true tradition of Christian teaching was being articulated and claimed as universal, notably in the work of Irenaeus, who may be regarded as the first great systematiser of Christian theology. The final essay moves the issues of Christian self-definition into a broader social framework, turning from questions of doctrine, discourse and world-view to matters of family life and social practice, highlighting the ambivalent status of Christians in Graeco-Roman society. This reflects a notable shift in scholarship at the turn of the twenty-first century towards social history, in response to what some have perceived as an over-emphasis on intellectual history. Broadly speaking, section III brings us to the end of the second century.

   Part IV, ‘Regional varieties of Christianity in the first three centuries’, focuses on the spread of Christianity ‘from Jerusalem . . . to the ends of the earth’ (as Luke terms it, in Acts 1:8) within the first three centuries. An essay on ‘the geographical spread of Christianity’ first engages the evidentiary and methodological issues involved in making demographic estimates of ‘Christianisation’ in the empire. Subsequent chapters are devoted to each of the major regions where Christian populations were found in the period up until Constantine: Asia Minor (and Achaea), Egypt, Syria and Mesopotomia, Gaul, North Africa and Rome. The chapters in this section reflect a notable historiographic shift in the study of earliest Christianity. Since the work of Walter Bauer,¹ which suggested that in some regions the earliest form of Christianity was heretical rather than orthodox, there has been radical reappraisal of the history of the early period: maybe diversity rather than uniformity characterised Christianity from the beginning; maybe what was heretical was only discerned by hindsight; maybe uniformity was imposed by the dominance of an emerging authority such as the Roman church. The last was Bauer’s thesis, a view that has been demolished in subsequent discussion. Nevertheless much else has directed scholars to regional variations, not least because different parts of the Roman empire had different roots and differing responses to Romanitas, especially the ruler cult, so that the religio-political context of Christian communities was not uniform, and this produced some variety in cultural and confessional ethos. In addition, research has turned up local varieties of liturgical practice and organisational structure in the churches. Scholars increasingly recognise the need for in-depth studies of the evidence for the presence of Christian communities, and an analysis of their particular character, in different localities.² Each of the essays in this section gathers the key pieces of literary, documentary and archaeological evidence and sketches the outlines of the principal events, controversies and personalities for that particular region, while also highlighting the essential fact that no area stood in complete isolation. Indeed, letters and travellers brought influences from one end of the Roman empire to another, and interaction was a significant reality.

   Part V, ‘The shaping of Christian theology’, mediates between these regional varieties and the ideologies of institutional unity that made the church appear to Constantine as a useful vehicle for his programme of uniting the empire. Here we trace the creation of a Christian world-view which instantiated itself in institutional structures which were pan-Mediterranean as well as local. Classic debates about doctrine we have set in a broader context than earlier church histories would have placed them, and we have avoided notions of development which imply a necessary outcome. Struggles over monotheism and the doctrine of creation set up the context for arguments about the nature of Jesus Christ and his relationship with the one God, while particular local controversies with more universal implications provide material for the discussion of Christology and ecclesiology. The section concludes by drawing attention to the fact that the larger context for doctrinal affirmations was the school-like character of early Christian discourse and the self-conscious development of a Christian intellectual culture to rival the paideia of the Graeco-Roman world. In the late fourth century and beyond, the traditional pagan educational programme, so far from being replaced, was gradually Christianised, but this process owed much to the earlier adaptation to study of the Bible of the curriculum and techniques traditionally taught in Graeco-Roman schools of rhetoric and philosophy.

   Part VI, ‘“Aliens” become citizens: towards imperial patronage’, traces the way in which Christians became increasingly at home in the world, despite their initial tendency to adopt the biblical motif of the resident alien or sojourner,³ claiming that their citizenship was in heaven. From the time of Paul, individual Christians may have held Roman citizenship, yet there was an ambivalence in their civic attitude as the diaspora mentality was, in a way, carried over to Gentile converts, and loyalty to Christ displaced loyalty to Caesar. Experience of persecution reinforced this, though it is important to grasp that, as the first essay shows, persecution was largely local and sporadic, and official empire-wide procedures directed against Christians mostly appear late in our period. The Roman perception that in some sense Christians did not belong is reflected in Christian views of the Roman empire, and the second essay provides a nuanced view of shifting attitudes to the question that is later phrased as the relation between ‘church and state’. The chapter on Constantine reflects on the crucial impact of this first ‘Christian emperor’, while also warning against oversimplified accounts of the socio-political and religious shifts that came with his reign. The essay on the Council of Nicaea provides a sense of the interplay of doctrinal and political factors as the search for unity was driven by the one who claimed to be ‘the bishop for those outside’, namely the emperor Constantine. The climax to the section is provided by a review of art and architecture spanning the whole story of this counter-cultural movement to its incorporation into the socio-cultural patterns of the Roman world and eventual articulation of a distinctive material culture. The section as a whole traces the changing parameters within which the question about the place of Christians in the world was considered in the pivotal period of the early fourth century. We conclude with a few remarks about how ancient Christianity is, in some complex configurations, foundational for the long and varied history to come.

   This conspectus is intended to show that, so far from being a ‘hotch-potch’ of unrelated essays, this collection as a whole has a sequence which hangs together, despite the various perspectives represented. The volume may be read as a consecutive history of the period, which the essays address from a multiplicity of angles. Readers are encouraged to follow up the subjects and questions raised in each essay by drawing on the chapter bibliographies each author has provided, and consulting the full details for primary and secondary literature cited across the essays, which can be found in the general bibliography.

   The editors would like to acknowledge with gratitude the efforts of all the authors, with thanks for their gracious response to feedback so that the volume as a whole could come together as effectively as it has. They have particularly appreciated the invaluable assistance provided by K. Scott Bowie, who, amongst other things, compiled the unified bibliography from the many provided by the authors, sorted out standard abbreviations, and produced the final copy in both hard and electronic form. They thank the University of Chicago Divinity School for generous institutional and financial support of this project. They would also like to express their gratitude to Cambridge University Press for the support of this project from inception through production. Finally they would like to dedicate this volume to Robert M. Grant, by whom both were taught and inspired.

FMY & MMM
December 2004

Acknowledgements

The editors acknowledge with gratitude permission to reprint maps from the Cambridge Ancient History and Cambridge History of Judaism, and Der Neue Pauly/Brill’s New Pauly (vol. III, pp. 262–3, our map 4), published by Metzler Verlag and E. J. Brill.

   We are grateful also to the University of Michigan, Yale University Art Gallery, and the International Catacomb Society for granting us permission to reprint images from their photo archives. All the photographs by individual photographers are reprinted here with their written permission and our thanks. We would particularly like to express gratitude to Professor Robin M. Jensen for valuable assistance in procuring the images.

Chart: Roman emperors and bishops of Rome and Alexandria^‗

Sources: for Roman emperors and bishops, Robert M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine, 313–14; for Alexandrine bishops, Birger A. Pearson (produced for this volume, as adapted from the traditional list).

Abbreviations

General

Primary sources

Books of the Bible

Old Testament

New Testament

Ambrose

Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles

Apostolic fathers

[Aristeas]

Aristides

Aristotle (Arist.)

Arnobius

Athanasius (Ath.)

Athenagoras

Augustine (August.)

Aurelius Victor (Aurel. Vict.)

Basil (Bas.)

Julius Caesar (Caes.)

Cassius Dio (Cass. Dio)

Chrysostom, John (Chrys.)

Cicero (Cic.)

Clement of Alexandria (Clem. Al.)

Clementina ([Clem.])

Constantine (Const.)

Cyprian (Cypr.)

Cyril of Jerusalem (Cyr. H.)

Dead Sea scrolls and related texts

Diodorus Siculus (Diod. Sic.)

Diogenes Laertius (Diog. Laert.)

Epiphanius (Epiph.)

Eusebius (Euseb.)

Gelasius of Cyzicus (Gel.)

Gregory of Nazianzus (Gr. Naz.)

Gregory of Nyssa (Gr. Nyss.)

Gregory Thaumaturgus (Gr. Thaum.)

Herodotus (Hdt.)

Hilary of Poitiers (Hil. Poit.)

Hippolytus (Hipp.)

Irenaeus (Iren.)

Jerome

Josephus